In order to protect against unauthorized access to data stored in a portable computer system, the computer system may be configured to disable itself, or to be remotely disabled upon one or more events, such as excessive login attempts, failure to communicate with a remote system within a scheduled time, or a user-reported loss or theft of the computer system.
A computer system may be disabled by deleting or blocking access to software based encryption keys, or by preventing an operating system from booting. Data stored in a lost or stolen computer may, however, be at risk of unauthorized access such as through another operating system or boot disk.
In the drawings, the leftmost digit(s) of a reference number identifies the drawing in which the reference number first appears.